Chicken Cacciatore Catastrophe

Ever have one of those mornings? You know where you have unexpected company at 5:30 a.m., find out the freezer door has been open all night, your kid lied about having her homework done and you suddenly realize you have two children that need to be in two places at 9 a.m.? No? Just me?

Oh well.

IF you ever find yourself with a plethora of suddenly defrosted chicken breasts though, feel free to use my Catastrophe Cacciatore, it will make the best of a bad situation.

Into the crock pot throw your chicken breasts (let's say you have 4-5 of these) season them with salt and pepper, cover them with a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, some spaghetti sauce or a mixture of both adding up to about 28 ounces (give or take). If you have some rapidly aging raw tomatoes in the fridge, chop them up and add those too, I mean, what the heck right? Also chop some onion, garlic and whatever variety of bell pepper you have on hand and toss that stuff in there. Put it all on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

If you are preparing this recipe on a NON catastrophic day you can take your time and cook your veggies a bit in olive oil to get some color on them, then put the cooked veggies in the crock pot, add some more oil if necessary and brown your chicken as well, not cooking through but getting some color on the breasts so that the resulting cacciatore has a deeper flavor.

You can serve this cacciatore over cooked pasta, polenta or on top of fresh spinach leaves. Top with a bit of the sauce the breasts have cooked in and also a dash of parmesan and a basil leaf or two if you have it.

Cinnamon Rolls

I am supposed to be moving house in a few weeks, but I am doing my level best to ignore that. By doing things like make cinnamon rolls, because yeah, that's helpful. I think what makes it harder is that I will be moving from my own home into someone else's home for a few months while my husband and I try to figure out where it is we want to live for a long time. My family has moved 5 times in the last 5 years, and when our landlord called at Christmas to tell us she wanted to sell the home we rent from her it just seemed like a sign for us to make a major change.

So, we are getting rid of many of our possessions, moving to my husband's home town and in with my in-laws and starting our own business. I KNOW< RIGHT!?!?! Some of you might remember that I was going to start a new project at the new year. My original idea was to do a year about home organization and housekeeping which historically has been a challenge for me. I'd much rather make dinner than do dishes and I'd even more rather read and write than do anything else. My husband and I decided back in January that we couldn't justify buying a house and settling permanently 6 hours away from my grandparents, my parents, his parents and the majority of our friends so we kept the news that we were leaving to ourselves until my husband could put in his one month notice.

Anyway, I will continue to cook, and write and read and raise my kids but I am nervous about the change, even though I know it will be a good change in the long run. I also need to think about a new topic for the blog. I am throwing it open to suggestions? Any ideas? Is living 3 generations in a single home something I could write about every day? How to ease children's transitions when we move? Book reviews? Movie reviews? Television recaps? All of the above? I am throwing it open to you guys. What do you want to hear about?

Also, I have been very busy collecting ideas for my new "someday" home on Pinterest, please feel free to follow me (Suzanne Costner) there! I have found some COOL stuff.

Pastina and Turkey with "Ratatouille"

So I had some yellow squash and zucchini that I needed to use. I took some inspiration from an unlikely source, Disney Pixar's children's film Ratatouille. In the climatic scene Remy the chef rat prepares a colorful mandolin sliced ratatouille topped with a pretty tomato sauce. I lacked the bell pepper and eggplant that makes a REAl ratatouille, but I decided to go ahead and use my mandolin to make thin, even slices of my squashes and also some sweet Vidalia onion. I made my tomato sauce from a can of petite diced tomatoes and the last of my carrot soup mixed together with the immersion blender. I also added a teaspoon of Italian spices to that. In the bottom of an 8 x 11 pan I spooned about a quarter of a cup of my "sauce" and spread it thinly over the bottom. I took the veggie slices and arranged them in long rows of alternating colors, yellow and green. I salt and peppered the veggies and then spooned some more of my "sauce" over the top and grated over all some fresh parmesan cheese. I cooked it in a 350 degree oven, covered with foil, for about 40 minutes, then I removed the cover and turned off the heat and let it stay in there for another 5 minutes. Meanwhile I prepared a quarter of a box of pastina (pasta stars). When they were cooked I strained them with a strainer, since they pasta is so small it would fall through the holes in my colander. I mixed the pastina with turkey from a turkey breast I roasted and spooned my "not for real ratatouille" over top. Yum! The leftover sauce was refrigerated and I am going to use it as pizza sauce for tonight's dinner of whole wheat pizza and eggplant pizza. To make eggplant "pizzas" slice an eggplant into rounds, place it on a cooling rack over a rimmed baking sheet. Heavily salt the rounds on both sides and allow to sit until the eggplant has released most of it's water. Rinse and dry the eggplant rounds, top with sauce, cheese and toppings and broil until cheese is bubbly and eggplant is cooked. A low carb pizza pie! Both pizzas will be served with salad and we will have ice cream for dessert. Have a great Friday!

Quick and Easy Lower Carb Dinners

My husband's reached the point in hie diet where he can start adding in some whole grain carbs so I'm trying to introduce them slowly. I made two dinners in that vein and I'd like to share them with you. Tuesday, I made a veggie-packed tomato sauce with all meat meatballs. Sautee up some chopped bell pepper, half an onion diced, 2 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped and a can of diced tomatoes (with or without Italian seasoning.) I added a half cup of pureed pumpkin I had made over the weekend, plus half a cup of leftover vegetarian spaghetti sauce from the freezer. I added some frozen meatballs to the sauce and let that all simmer while the water boiled for the whole grain pasta. When the pasta was cooked I drained it quickly and served the kids pasta and sauce, hubby got the meatballs and sauce over wilted spinach and I ate mine with pasta, wilted spinach and sauce over all. I also steamed a large bunch of asparagus to serve as a side dish. The next day I still had pasta leftover and asparagus, so I decided to make a "Hamburger Helper" type recipe using them. I chopped up one whole orange bell pepper, half an onion and 2 cloves of garlic and cooked them in olive oil. I added 1 pound of ground turkey meat when the veggies had gotten soft and seasoned the meat with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. I let the meat cook while I whipped up a quick cheese sauce. In a separate pan I made a quick roux and thinned it with milk. I added about 1 cup of shredded cheese (I used a 5 cheese blend) to the pan and stirred and melted it in. I added 1/3 C of my leftover carrot soup to the cheese sauce, just to add some orange color and nutrition. I chopped the asparagus into bite sized pieces and added it to the meat and veggies in the pan. When that was heated through I added the leftover pasta and the cheese sauce overall and stirred it together. Dinner was ready to serve in big bowls, some lovely orange and green veggies, whole wheat pasta, lean protein and calcium all on one dish.

Low Carb Sunday Lunch and Dinner

Lunch on Sunday was supposed to be cooked on the grill, but we had some pretty serious April Showers with lightning, thunder, wind, in short, NOT a great day to cook out. I made our burgers and cooked them inside in my iron skillet. I made the patties low-carb by leaving out my usual addition of a 1/4 C of italian bread crumbs, 1 egg, and splash of milk. These burgers were lean, mean, carb banishing machines made with ground sirloin, finely diced onions, a squirt of yellow mustard, 1 pinch of salt, a generous sprinkle of pepper and a few good shakes of my favorite BBQ rub. Avoid the urge to squish your hands dramatically through the raw meat and cackle maniacally over it. First off, over-handling the meat makes for tough burgers and second, the laughing thing freaks out your family and can never be properly explained to the neighbor kid who just came by to see if the girls could play. I heated the iron skillet over medium high heat while I formed the patties. There was some residual oil left in the pan from the last time I had seasoned it, but if you are using a regular pan or a dry iron skillet add a 1/2 TB or so of oil to the pan to prevent sticking. Lean ground beef will stick if the pan is not lubed, fattier ground beef requires no such precautions. Form your patties, place them gently on the hot pan and then WALK AWAY!. Don't be lifting the edges to look at them, or flipping them over and over, don't smash them with a spatula, just walk away! DO IT! I busied myself by adding the macaroni to the boiling water for the kid's side dish, then I sliced half an onion and opened and drained a can of mushrooms to make some sauteed onions and mushrooms for the burger topping. Only then did I go and look at the burgers again. They were seared on one side and easy to lift and flip so I turned them and only then did I press them down lightly with the back of the spatula. I let them cook, but I lowered the heat to medium till they were done. I put the burgers on a paper towel lined plate and then put the onions in the pan, when they were browned, softened and fragrant I added the mushrooms and sprinkled them with a pinch of salt. When they were cooked through (3 minutes?) I took the mushrooms out and took a couple of handfuls of rinsed fresh baby spinach and added them to the same pan. Those wilt in less than a minute. Meanwhile I had some frozen green beans steaming in the microwave. So lunch went thusly, grown up burgers topped with a thin slice of low-fat cheese served on a bed of wilted spinach, topped with sauteed mushrooms and onions. Side of green beans and salad topped with sugar free vinaigrette (Actually I had a raspberry vinaigrette and a spoonful of the mac and cheese too!). Kids burgers one topped with cheese and one without, both with a side of macaroni and cheese and green beans, one kid opted for a salad, one kid wanted some grapes. All in all it was a pretty successful meal. The dinner schedule by SB Diet was supposed to be baked chicken, but we had enough

leftover rotisserie chicken so we got by with that. For a side dish I adapted a SB side dish recipe and it came out so well that I'd like to share it here. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with heavy duty foil. Peel an eggplant, quarter it lengthwise and then cut the quarters into good-sized chunks (maybe 1/2 inch wide). Place on baking pan. Cut up a handful of miniature bell peppers of many colors or 1/2 of a red bell pepper and half a yellow pepper (or whatever you have on hand.) Cut up 1 whole onion by cutting in half and then cutting the halves in thick slices following the natural lines of the onion. Scatter these amongst the eggplant chunks. Pour over all 1/4 C of olive oil, just drizzled over and around the veggies. Season with a generous pinch of salt, several sprinkles of pepper and a goodly amount of Italian seasoning. Put it in the oven for 20 minutes, pull it out and flip over the veggies with a spatula. Return them to the oven to cook for another 15 minutes then pull them out again. Peppers should be brown and soft, onions starting to caramelize and eggplant softened and small. If they are still not to your liking you can place them under the broiler for a minute or two to finish. But don't walk away while they are under the broiler, unless you adore the smell of burning eggplant and the ambience of smoke in the dining room.

Hubby and I had eggplant and peppers, chicken and salad for dinner. Kids had chicken, macaroni and strawberries for dinner. Hubby had a sugar free Jello for dessert, kids had vanilla ice cream, and I had a hacked off piece of chocolate from the giant Hershey's kiss one of the kids got as an Easter present. I think I got the best dessert. :)

Today's Lunch and Dinner

Rotisserie Chicken with Rosemary Steamed mixed veggies Tossed Salad Homemade No Sugar Vinaigrette So my husband has decided he wants to do the South Beach diet. I am not a dieter myself, but I want to be supportive of my husband whilst still preparing foods my kids enjoy and need. For instance in the first phase of the South Beach diet (hence known as SB) you aren't supposed to eat ant fruit, which would be terrible for children. Frankly I am not convinced it is awesome for adults either, but like I said, I want to be supportive. For example, today for lunch I made chicken breast tenderloins, dusted with BBQ rub and cooked in a TB of olive oil, in the same pan I cooked the chicken I wilted some baby spinach and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I served that with a big mixed green side salad and hubby had 2 TB of a sugar free vinaigrette while I had Raspberry vinaigrette (yum!) and the kids had strawberries and grapes. So he gets to diet and we get to eat and hopefully everyone will be happy. Tonight's dinner according to the SB plan is supposed to be Salmon with Rosemary. We don't have any salmon and frankly for what it costs down here, especially if you insist on wild caught salmon as I do, we're eating chicken and are glad to do so. Take a whole chicken and rub it all over with a mixture of 2 TB olive oil, 1 1/2 tsp. of salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper and half a teaspoon crushed rosemary. I usually place a half an onion, a bay leaf, a fresh rosemary sprig or two and a half carrot in the cavity of the chicken before I rotisserie or oven roast the chicken for added flavor. You could also use a pierced whole lemon, some celery or even a medley of fresh herbs such as sage, thyme and parsley. It usually takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and 20 minutes to rotisserie a chicken depending on how big it is of course, just make sure you cook it until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. Hope you have a lovely dinner tonight too!

Overripe Bananas? We have you covered!

There are SOOO many things to do with a bunch of overripe bananas, of course there's banana bread, banana muffins, smoothies, banana pancakes, banana fritters, but here is a recipe that will knock your socks off!

Banana Pudding (made with ACTUAL bananas!)

I went looking for recipe for actual banana pudding, made from scratch using real bananas and it was

hard to find. Fortunately for all of us, my friend Jen, who lives on a vineyard in Chile has invented this luscious, creamy version. ENJOY!

My Mother-in-Law's Famous Banana Fritters

1 1/4 C Flour (I use whole grain all purpose)
1/4 t salt
1 t baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 C milk
1 t oil
As many bananas chopped up as you can manage :)
Oil for shallow frying

Sift dry ingredients together, make a well in the center, add wet ingredients and mix to form a batter. Add in your chopped bananas. Drop by large spoonfuls into hot oil in a heavy skillet. Cook only on medium heat so they don't burn on the outside and remain raw on the inside. It may take you a couple of fritters to get the temperature correct. When they are done transfer to a plate covered with paper towels to drain and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve hot with butter and syrup if desired.

You can tweak the batter to use 1/4 C of bran to it if you just need it to be healtheier.

Banana Smoothie/"Ice Cream"

Peel over ripe bananas. Keep in a freezer bag in the freezer until needed for smoothies where they add a creamy smoothness. Or simply blend with a bit of honey and yogurt in a blender until you get a consistency like soft-serve ice cream for a refreshing fruit dessert. Honestly, it is a delight.